People’s True Nature?

If you want to despair of humanity — of people’s lack of virtue, kindness or intelligence — inability to think or reason — misplaced vanity — bitterness, ridiculousness and pettiness — not to mention lack of anything better to do — go to any popular site on the web . . . and read the comments.

There’s such a pattern to web comments that I start to think that either these are patterns common to human beings in general OR, this is more hopeful, that they’re simply common to an outsized percentage of people who leave comments.

Jean Shepherd used to say that an anonymous letter is often truer than a letter that you sign. Was he right? On the web, people assume personalities and identities. They become as nasty as they can manage, perhaps while pretending to themselves that they’re only pretending. But isn’t it just as possible that the persons that people pretend to be really represent their true essential selves, and the people they are in life are just the inhibited guarded shadow of their true nature? Just a thought. What do you think?